{"id":304250,"date":"2025-10-15T02:48:16","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T02:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/304250\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T02:48:16","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T02:48:16","slug":"mark-pope-gives-positive-health-update-on-otega-oweh-ahead-of-season-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/304250\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Pope gives positive health update on Otega Oweh ahead of season-opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mark Pope and Kentucky<\/a> benefited strongly from the play of Otega Oweh in the 2024-25 season. The Oklahoma<\/a> transfer emerged as one of the top players in the SEC, averaging 16.2 points per game en route to second-team All-SEC<\/a> honors.<\/p>\n

Expectations are high for the senior heading into 2025-26 as the SEC\u2019s preseason player of the year. But a turf toe injury sidelined him for 10 weeks and limited his availability for preseason practice until his return on Monday.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s good timing: the Wildcats host No. 1 Purdue in an exhibition on Oct. 24 and Georgetown on Oct. 30 before opening the season against Nicholls on Nov. 4.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re going to have a guy miss the first couple weeks of practice, he really has been out for almost 10 weeks now, he\u2019s the guy to do it,\u201d Pope said during SEC Tip-Off in Birmingham on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The Wildcats\u2019 second-year head coach said that he is working to get Oweh gradually up to speed. From the sounds of it, Oweh\u2019s anxious to get going.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe actually was in practice a couple days ago in his first live scrimmage, really his first possession of live scrimmage, we\u2019re all kind of walking on eggshells. He got a steal, raced down the floor, outside the free throw, dunked it,\u201d Pope recalled.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s par for the course for someone like Oweh, Pope noted, mentioning that the New Jersey product has a \u201ccompetitive motor\u201d<\/a> that \u201cyou cannot turn off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s been through this. He understands it. He knows what he\u2019s in for. He understands the pressure of the moment. He understands everything that Kentucky is. He embraces it. He can\u2019t get enough of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Sydney<\/p>\n

Sydney is an Atlanta-based journalist who has covered everything from SEC and ACC football to MLS, the U.S. men’s national soccer team and professional tennis. His work has appeared on such platforms as SB Nation, Cox Media Group and FanSided.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mark Pope and Kentucky benefited strongly from the play of Otega Oweh in the 2024-25 season. The Oklahoma…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":304251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[1339,1317,1337,1338,62,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-304250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-united-states","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115375906857885998","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}